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Review Brain Reward Circuitry View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Elsevier - Publisher Connector Neuron, Vol. 36, 229–240, October 10, 2002, Copyright 2002 by Cell Press Brain Reward Circuitry: Review Insights from Unsensed Incentives Roy A. Wise1 as to the trigger zones at which addictive drugs initiate Behavioral Neuroscience Branch their habit-forming actions. The second discusses pos- Intramural Research Program sible explanations for the fact that drug reward and brain National Institute on Drug Abuse stimulation reward establish seemingly more compul- National Institutes of Health sive habits than do the natural pleasures of life. The final Bethesda, Maryland 20892 section illustrates—again, by contrasting sensed and unsensed incentives—the fuzziness of the distinction between the “receipt” of reward and the prediction of The natural incentives that shape behavior reach the reward. central circuitry of motivation trans-synaptically, via the five senses, whereas the laboratory rewards of Anatomy of Drug Reward intracranial stimulation or drug injections activate re- While there is much to learn about which dopamine ward circuitry directly, bypassing peripheral sensory neurons play roles in incentive motivation and reinforce- pathways. The unsensed incentives of brain stimula- ment and there is much more to learn about the afferents tion and intracranial drug injections thus give us tools to and the efferents from those dopamine neurons, a to identify reward circuit elements within the associa- good deal is known about the brain structures and re- tional portions of the CNS. Such studies have impli- ceptor subtypes at which addictive drugs trigger their cated the mesolimbic dopamine system and several habit-forming actions. This information comes in large of its afferents and efferents in motivational function. part from studies involving intracranial drug injections Comparisons of natural and laboratory incentives sug- that are reviewed below. The guiding assumption of gest hypotheses as to why some habits become com- such studies is that the relevant receptors for drug re- pulsive and give insights into the roles of reinforce- ward are to be found at sites where the lowest doses ment and of prediction of reinforcement in habit of microinjected drugs are rewarding. This is a fair as- formation. sumption so long as care is taken to sample enough injection sites to ensure that the site of action is at the The discovery by Olds and Milner (1954) that rats would site of microinjection. The minimum controls for ensur- learn to work for direct electrical stimulation of the brain ing the validity of this assumption are “geologic” con- initiated the search for the anatomical circuitry through trols; unless one can demonstrate that similar injections which the normal pleasures of life establish habits that in the regions bounding the putative site of action are come to dominate the behavior of higher animals. It soon not rewarding, one can never be sure that the drug is became apparent that lateral hypothalamic brain stimu- not spreading to act at a distance (Routtenberg, 1972; lation was not only rewarding; it was also drive inducing Wise and Hoffman, 1992). Of particular danger with hy- (Olds and Olds, 1965; Coons et al., 1965; Glickman and draulic injections is that the drug spreads up the cannula Schiff, 1967). Electrical stimulation of reward-related shaft to a distant site of action or to the ventricular structures thus became a tool to identify anatomical system (a pressure sink that is frequently penetrated by substrates presumed to participate in natural motivation injection cannulae). The dangers of such spread are (Mendelson and Chorover, 1965; MacDonnell and Flynn, well illustrated by studies of the dipsogenic actions of 1966a, 1966b; Wise, 1974) and reward (Olds and Olds, carbachol (Routtenberg and Simpson, 1974) and angio- 1963; German and Bowden, 1974; Routtenberg, 1976). tensin (Johnson and Epstein, 1975). Inasmuch as the reward of direct brain stimulation was The Mesolimbic Dopamine System not detected by sight, sound, taste, smell, or touch, it A number of drugs are rewarding when injected into provided an unsensed incentive with some degree the nucleus accumbens where they act at mesolimbic of anatomical specificity. Intravenous (Weeks, 1962; dopamine terminals. Amphetamine, a dopamine re- Thompson and Schuster, 1964; Deneau et al., 1969) and leaser, is self-administered (Hoebel et al., 1983) and intracranial (Olds et al., 1964; Phillips and LePiane, 1980; establishes conditioned place preferences (Carr and Bozarth and Wise, 1981) drug reinforcement soon of- White, 1983) when injected into this region. Amphet- fered an unsensed incentive with neurochemical speci- amine injections into this region also potentiate (sum- ficity. These two techniques have subsequently been mate with) the rewarding effects of lateral hypothalamic used extensively to characterize brain reward circuitry brain stimulation (Colle and Wise, 1988). The dopamine with respect to both its anatomy and neurochemistry. uptake inhibitors nomifensine and cocaine are also self- Because these laboratory incentives are not detected administered into nucleus accumbens; injections into in the external world of the animal, they also reveal the shell are effective, whereas injections into the more important insights into behavior motivated by natural dorsal and lateral core are not (Carlezon et al., 1995). rewards. The present paper comprises three sections. Nomifensine also potentiates lateral hypothalamic brain The first characterizes the elements of brain reward cir- stimulation reward by its action in this region (Carlezon cuitry that have been identified by central drug injections and Wise, 1996b). and intracranial stimulation and that offer our best clues Cholinergic agents are rewarding when injected into the ventral tegmental area (VTA). Cytisine, a nicotinic 1Correspondence: [email protected] agonist, induces conditioned place preference when in- Neuron 230 jected into the VTA but not when injected just dorsal neurons that normally hold their dopaminergic neigh- to it (Museo and Wise, 1994). The cholinergic agonist bors under inhibitory control (Johnson and North, 1992). carbachol causes conditioned place preference when GABAergic agents themselves are also self-adminis- injected into the VTA (Yeomans et al., 1985). Carbachol tered into the VTA (Ikemoto et al., 1997c, 1998b; David and the acetylcholinesterase inhibitor neostigmine are et al., 1997). The GABAA antagonists picrotoxin and bicu- self-administered into the VTA; posterior VTA injections culline are self-administered into the anterior VTA, while, are most effective, and injections dorsal or lateral to the somewhat surprisingly, the GABAA agonist muscimol is VTA are ineffective (Ikemoto and Wise, 2002). Low doses self-administered into the posterior VTA; co-infusion of of carbachol are effective in producing conditioned muscimol antagonizes the rewarding effects of anterior place preferences when injected into the posterior but VTA picrotoxin injections, and, conversely, co-infusion not the anterior VTA and not dorsal to the posterior of picrotoxin antagonizes the rewarding effects of poste- VTA (Ikemoto and Wise, 2002). Carbachol activates both rior VTA muscimol injections. Self-administration of the muscarinic and nicotinic receptors, and each type of GABAA antagonists, at least, is thought to be dopamine receptor is expressed by dopaminergic neurons (Clarke dependent (Ikemoto et al., 1997b; David et al., 1997). and Pert, 1985; Weiner et al., 1990) and appears to con- The mechanisms for these effects are not yet completely tribute to carbachol’s rewarding (Ikemoto and Wise, clear, because GABAA receptors are expressed not only 2002) and reward-enhancing (Yeomans and Baptista, by VTA dopamine neurons (Sugita et al., 1992) but also 1997) effects in this region. by the GABAergic neurons that normally inhibit the do- Rewarding hypothalamic brain stimulation appears to pamine neurons (Rick and Lacey, 1994). depend on trans-synaptically induced release of acetyl- Microinjections of dopamine D1 antagonists in the choline in the VTA (Yeomans et al., 1985). The axons of VTA attenuate the rewarding effects of intravenous co- the mesolimbic dopamine system have high thresholds, caine (Ranaldi and Wise, 2001), presumably by blocking and very few are directly activated, at traditional stimula- the effects of dendritically released dopamine on either tion parameters, by rewarding hypothalamic stimulation GABAergic (Starr, 1987; Cameron and Williams, 1993) (Yeomans, 1989; Murray and Shizgal, 1994). The bulk of or glutamatergic (Kalivas and Duffy, 1995) inputs to the the “first-stage” hypothalamic reward fibers—the re- region. Glutamatergic input to the VTA appears to offer ward-relevant portion of the medial forebrain bundle an important link in the brain’s reward circuitry. VTA that is directly depolarized by cathodal current in the glutamate inputs arise from cortical sites including the lateral hypothalamic medial forebrain bundle—are frontal cortex. Rats will lever-press for injections of thought to be caudally projecting fibers (Bielajew and phencyclidine and other NMDA antagonists into the Shizgal, 1986) with refractory periods in the range of frontal cortex (Carlezon and Wise, 1996a), and direct 0.4–2.5 ms (Yeomans, 1979; Bielajew et al., 1982; Grat- electrical stimulation in this region is also rewarding ton and Wise, 1985) and conduction velocities
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